SF supes OK two for Police Commission, which now has a quorum

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved two appointments to the city’s Police Commission, which did not have enough members for a quorum and could not meet.

Photo: Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

After weeks with too few people to meet, San Francisco’s Police Commission is back on the job after the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday named two new members.

The appointments of John Hamasaki and Cindy Elias, both attorneys with backgrounds in criminal defense, give the commission the quorum it’s been lacking to move forward with decisions on police policy and officer discipline. The panel has been nailing down the Police Department’s Taser policy and working to implement changes recommended by the U.S. Department of Justice following a series of police shootings.

“We’re trying to do a lot of reform at the Police Department and these two candidates, to me, would be the strongest moving forward,” Supervisor Norman Yee said shortly before the unanimous vote.

Hamasaki is a criminal defense attorney. He also serves on the Board of Governors for the California Attorneys for Criminal Justice, a trade group. Elias is a labor enforcement attorney with the California Department of Industrial Relations and former San Francisco deputy public defender.

Elias is married to Lateef Gray, a lawyer at a prominent Bay Area civil rights firm that has represented families suing the police departments. The law firm, which is led by John Burris, currently represents relatives of Mario Woods and Luis Gongora Pat, two men killed by San Francisco police officers.

While Supervisor Jeff Sheehy raised the issue of a possible conflict of interest, as reported Tuesday in The Chronicle, most of his colleagues downplayed the concern.

A motion made by Sheehy to postpone a decision on Elias by a week failed to win support, with only Supervisor London Breed on board. The supervisors then unanimously supported moving forward with the two candidates.

Supervisor Malia Cohen said that the two candidates had been vetted during a recent eight-hour hearing, and she called concerns about Elias looking out for her husband’s professional interests “sexist.”

The Police Commission was left without a quorum after two members resigned in late April and early May and the Board of Supervisors on May 15 rejected the re-appointments of two members supported by Mayor Mark Farrell, who has since renominated those two candidates, Joe Marshall and Sonia Melara.

The majority of supervisors said they wanted to wait until a new mayor was selected in Tuesday’s election before considering the mayor’s nominations.

The Board of Supervisors also voted unanimously to recommend a name change for Julius Kahn Playground in the Presidio. The neighborhood park at West Pacific Avenue and Spruce Street is named after the late, 12-term congressman who was praised as a strong military supporter but also known for pushing a ban on Chinese immigration in the early 1900s.

Citing Kahn’s racism, the board’s Public Safety and Neighborhood Services Committee last month recommended the name change. The city’s Recreation and Park Commission has final say.

Supervisors also tempered their concern over a plan to build a private marina on Yerba Buena Island after Supervisor Jane Kim announced that the developer had scaled back the proposal.

The board, by a unanimous vote, passed a resolution laying out what it expects of the project at Clipper Cove but supporting the new “footprint.” Supervisors have worried that the private development by Treasure Island Enterprises would infringe upon public recreation.

And the supervisors voted to continue operations of the city’s Navigation Centers in the Mission and on 12th Street near the Civic Center. The Mission Navigation Center, which opened in March 2015, will operate through Sept. 30, 2018, and the Civic Center Navigation Center will operate through Dec. 31, 2021.

Kurtis Alexander is a general assignment reporter for The San Francisco Chronicle, frequently writing about water, wildfire, climate and the American West. His recent work has focused on the impacts of drought, the widening rural-urban divide and state and federal environmental policy.

Before joining the Chronicle, Alexander worked as a freelance writer and as a staff reporter for several media organizations, including The Fresno Bee and Bay Area News Group, writing about government, politics and the environment.